


Call Off Your Ghost

by NaoNazo



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Groundhog Day AU, i swear this was going to be like fifteen pages but then the Work Schedule attacked, not actually all that angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22790686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NaoNazo/pseuds/NaoNazo
Summary: Gracia had a book full of flowers she’d pressed from their first dates. A single flower, because Maes had heard she hated the way bouquets were bound together and withered one by one. He’d promised to give her one flower each time, so she could keep it any way she wanted. Even their wedding bouquet, Maes had hid a single white rose in an arrangement of folded paper flowers.Gracia had gotten drunk with him one night while the Elrics watched Elicia. She’d stared at the bar counter, tracing nicks in the varnish as she told him Elicia always remembered the only promise her father ever broke.Not the only one, Mustang had wanted to say. Just the one he made to you.
Relationships: Maes Hughes & Roy Mustang
Comments: 14
Kudos: 64
Collections: Time Loop Hell (Feb 2020)





	Call Off Your Ghost

The call never came to his office phone.

Not that it seemed to be a _call_ , precisely. The phone didn’t ring. When he dialed the operator to trace the message, the records came up blank. At first he’d done some digging to be absolutely _sure_ Envy was stone cold dead, but no hits there. He’d considered, in the depths of his fifth cup of coffee-with-a-liberal-dash-of-whiskey, that there might be a bevy of telephone operators conspiring to overthrow him by way of--

Well, he couldn’t even call it something as light as a prank call. Prank calls were Edward Professional-Pain-in-the-Ass Elric dialing him up after his birthday bash to slur drunkenly and incomprehensibly about his latest studies, meandering between Common, Aurogonian, and what sounded like bastard Xingese.

Mustang regarded the answering machine tiredly, its blinking light mocking him. His eyes were gritty with days of poor sleep, not that that was anything new. His vision, restored by Dr. Marcoh’s Philosopher’s Stone, still strained to pick out details when darkness fell.

Captain Hawkeye had suggested he get glasses, but that was always Maes’s--

He wouldn’t look good in them. That was all.

Besides, he didn’t need them to see that flashing red light, winking like a signal lamp. A useless one that kept repeating the letter ‘T,’ sure, long burst after long burst. T for trouble, T for torture, T for… too much whiskey, maybe.

He topped off his mug with the last of the bottle.

_‘What, Sparky, afraid of a little missed call?’_

Maes’s voice was always lighter in his memories.

‘ _Come on, Colonel Mustang~, I have new stories of my wonderful daughter to share~~~’_

If only that was what he’d hear.

‘ _Just the other day, Roy, my perfect, amazing baby girl--’_

Instead of the actual message, stored in that silent machine.

The call he could never pick up, that appeared on his records every night at precisely 10:52 PM. The one he dreaded to hear but could never bring himself to delete.

With a sigh, he slugged back the last of his whis-coffee, picked up the receiver and pressed play.

“It’s Lieutenant Colonel Hughes calling from an outside line, dammit! Put me through, the whole military’s at risk!”

His friend’s voice always deepened when he was serious. 

“My code?! Ugh….” The sound of a man pawing one handed through his codebook. Maes was perhaps the most intelligent intelligence officer Mustang had ever met, tautology intended, but the man could never remember his passcodes worth a damn. “Uncle Sugar Oliver Eight Zero Zero, now put me through to Mustang!”

Mustang could never figure out how the message could start _before_ the operator connected the phone. He was almost grateful it did, though. The voice that sighed in gruff aggravation as he waited for the ring, the huffs of breath as he shifted his feet in the night chill…

They were like the last high tones of a heart monitor before the flatline.

He had to strain to hear the next exchange over the ringing of the phone, but it was useless. Sounds of a scuffle, the distinctive sound of a shot and then, in almost unnaturally good quality, like the phone was held next to Maes’s mouth, he’d hear him apologizing to Elicia and Gracia--

The one he heard Maes apologize for every night on his machine, which would slowly drive him crazy if it hadn’t already--

“--Sorry, Mustang, I broke… promise…”

Mustang

dropped

the

_________________

Riza fixed her hair clip where it was threatening to slip and walked into Mustang’s office. This time of night, there was only one last load of papers for him to review. She cleared her throat in an unobtrusive, _‘I’m aware you’ve been staring at a wall for the last half hour but refuse to go home, nevertheless I need to clock out now and also please remember you still owe me time and a half for last week’_ sort of way.

Her commanding officer was glaring around the office like he’d decided to rip out the walls to check for listening devices again. He usually only did that after Hughes visited, though, he was off-schedule by at least a week.

“Sir.” She set her armful of paperwork on his desk. “Black Hayate needs feeding. Try to remember to feed yourself before tomorrow.”

His eyes went to her hair and narrowed.

“Sir?”

“Prove you’re her.” He raised his hand, ready to snap. 

Another Ishval flashback? She cursed, raising both hands. “Sir, you know me. You’ve known me since you came to study with my father--” She faltered as his face hardened. “Sir. When…. My back got hurt. I thanked you.”

His hand lowered slightly. “... Explain why we’re here, Captain.”

_Captain?_ “Sir, are you--”

The phone began to ring.

Mustang pounced on it, almost desperately. “Fullmetal, if this is your idea of--”

Hawkeye wasn’t sure how to describe the look that dawned in his eyes, some awful mix of rage, disbelief, sorrow… guilt? She wasn’t sure how to describe the way his hand twitched towards the dial, like he wanted to end the call, while he clutched the phone to his ear like he’d never let go.

The dial tone rang as the other end hung up. 

Her superior’s face was the color of day-old mozzarella.

Half in a daze, he dialled a number. 

“Central City first response, I need an ambulance for the phone booth on the corner of William Jones and Archimedes, in front of military headquarters. Bring extra units of A negative and O negative blood, there’s a shooting victim. He’s been shot in the chest.”

The other end of the line said something.

“I--” Was Mustang… crying? “I can’t keep pressure on the wound.”

He wasn’t.

Not yet.

“I’m. Not. _There_.” 

_________________

The train ride from East to Central took four hours. Mustang absently noted the lack of sensation. His palms weren’t tight, aching with aggravated scars and torturous physical therapy exercises he compulsively complied with under Hawkeye’s exacting gaze. The Captain gave him a set of sand-filled balls for his last birthday, of all things. And had the gall to roll her eyes when he taught himself to juggle.

He had nothing on hand, this silent ride. Just Hawkeye, lips pressed white with repressed anxiety. Just the dark-blurred view from the window, smeared with small hand-prints from someone’s child.

His eyes were drawn to the simple smiling face drawn at the height of his elbow. 

Elicia drew those on every window she passed. Each glass surface in her home, including the oven door, stamped with a little girl’s smile.

The first time he visited their home after the burial, the smiling faces had still been there. Gracia, bone-weary from staying awake with an inconsolable child, mentioned that she’d been meaning to get Maes to wash the windows since he was a disaster with the lawn mower and now--

And now.

Mustang huffed a sigh against the glass and wiped it clean with his sleeve. His mind was half-hazed. Half-hopeful.

There hadn’t been time to wait for a call from the hospital before he and Hawkeye left for the capital. He’d sent the ambulance, the units of blood-- blood loss had been marked cause of death, and Maes had always hated donating. Said it made him feel cold and floaty, and only Gracia’s perfect wonderful cooking could fix him.

He’d sent an ambulance and contacted Major Armstrong to meet him in the hospital, a one-man protection squad. He’d sent all the help he could.

Four fucking hours until he’d learn if he’d managed to save him.

_________________

Most people look smaller in hospital beds. 

Diminished, somehow. Fullmetal usually looked half his size whenever he was admitted, although to be fair, he did tend to be missing at least one limb whenever that happened.

Maes didn’t look smaller, or paler, or diminished.

He looked dead. 

The doctors said if the ambulance was ten minutes later, he would have been.

Mustang set a round-the-clock guard outside Hughes’s room. He and Riza alternated nights. She cleaned her guns at a folding table near the door. He listened for the heart monitor.

_________________

Elicia clutched her father’s cold hand all of the next day and asked when he would wake up.

_________________

And the next day.

_________________

The day after, she screamed it.

_________________

Mustang didn’t think it was an accident that a week after he arrived at Central, Maes died on the hospital bed. 

The day guard remembered letting in a dark-haired nurse that afternoon, near his lunch break. When asked what she looked like, he smirked and sketched an hourglass figure in the air.

Mustang nearly decked the fucker-- he’d made it _clear_ in _excruciating detail_ that all personnel should present ID before being let in the room, and that they were _never_ to be alone with Hughes. 

He’d nearly finished the prep work to have Hughes removed to a smaller clinic he could guard better, but, dammit, he was being watched, they all were. He hadn’t wanted to move Hughes only to spook the homunculi into grabbing more leverage. He’d thought, with Hughes comatose, they’d--

Well.

They had.

He stood at the grave he knew too fucking well, watching them fill it.

Elicia screamed that they had to put her Papa back to bed. He needed his sleep. And then he’d wake up, Mommy, you _promised!_

A corporal ran up as the cemetery emptied. 

“Sir! Sorry to disturb you, but. There’s a message for you at headquarters. Couldn’t catch the name but they said--”

_________________

It was afternoon in his office and he was holding the phone. His best friend was on the line.

“-- told Gracia I was sorry I couldn’t go with her to see the Elrics off, but I still have work to do here! Thought of a few new leads to check out, you know. But I promised I’d be back to kiss Elicia good night~~” 

Mustang was going insane.

“ _Maes_.” 

“Mustang?” He could hear his friend breathing.

His hand tightened on the receiver. Military line. Almost certainly tapped.

“...You should go with them. Meet their teacher.” He pulled his mouth into a smile somehow. “Might find something interesting there, too, if you see the sights. I hear there’s a bar there that does a mean mixed drink, like Shou Tucker used to like. You might wanna find out about their recipe.”

Maes… _paused_.

“Mixed _drink_ , huh, Roy?”

Mustang closed his eyes, bringing a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. That tone of voice, the shift of the phone against his shoulder.

That was Maes reaching for a knife.

“Yeah. I’d have you ask the Elrics about it, but they’re not drinking age. Maybe their teacher would be interested in a night on the town. Do me a favor and keep it quiet when you’re done… you know what they say about growing kids and sleep.”

“...You want me to call when I get this _recipe_ , Mustang?” Unspoken, but clearly understood, was his friend glaring daggers across the phone line, ‘ _what have you gotten me into this time_ ’ flashing in his sharp eyes.

The only mystery I could think of to keep you out of danger, Maes.

“Nah, you know my memory. Just jot it down when you get the chance.”

“Understood. I’ll ask Gracia to help me pack?” _Do I need to bring my family?_

“Do it yourself, you lazy bum. I’m headed to Central in a bit and I don’t make Hawkeye pack _my_ bags.” 

Hawkeye, at the door. One hand full of paperwork. 

The other, slowly and clearly tapping her holstered gun.

Fuck, he didn’t want to hang up.

“Speaking of the lovely, talented, immeasurably skilled Cap-- _Lieutenant--_ ” he interjected.

Maes laughed.

His voice got deeper when he did that. Elicia’s favorite thing when she was two was to sit on her father’s chest and poke his neck until he laughed. Gracia said it was because the rumbling was like a big cat purring.

Mustang waited for the laughter to end before he finished with, “Take care. Call if you need anything.”

Rustle of fabric, Maes had given the phone a cheeky salute.

“Will do! And when you make it to Central, let Gracia know so she can start on the pie~~”

With a click, he hung up.

_________________

In a week, Mustang stood in front of a familiar grave, watching as they filled it.

Elicia was looking for her father to come back from his trip. The body, according to the mortician, had been too badly mangled for a viewing.

Edward had arrived alone to the funeral, pale-faced. His brother was listed as ‘missing’ in the official report.

Judging by the frantic look he kept giving Mustang, and the new shadow sticking to his side like glue, Al wasn’t ‘missing’ so much as ‘taken.’

Mustang would have found a way to get his subordinate alone, but a corporal came up to the cemetery just as the funeral ended.

“Sir, there’s a message for you at Headquarters. We couldn’t catch the name, but he said--”

_________________

Mustang was holding a phone, afternoon sun streaming over his shoulder. He calculated that it was at least two weeks since he’d slept last night. His best friend was on the phone.

He hung up with a click, grabbed his coat and boarded the next train to Central. Time to use his long overdue vacation for some fucking good.

_________________

Two weeks later, he sat in a military holding cell. Nominally awaiting questioning while they looked into the death of ‘Maria Ross.’ 

He would also like to know where Maria Ross was.

And when they’d allow him a shower.

Even after the war, he reflected to his rough-scrubbed hands, the stink of blood and burned flesh was doomed to follow him.

The afternoon the funeral was to be held, a corporal handed the guard a message. 

“Doesn’t say who it’s from, but--”

_________________

He arrived in Central early enough to catch Maes before he hit the archives for some late night research. Two long days of jumping at shadows while he was stuffed with pie and casserole, two long days where he sat on the Hughes's couch, gloves bared, eyes gritty.

Two days greedily devouring his friend's every movement, every _living moment_.

Two days before the "driveby shooting."

A buxom brunette nurse came to inform them he'd died on the table. Mustang glared into her wine-red eyes and _snapped._

The military holding cell was beginning to feel familiar as the hospital waiting room.

_________________

He incinerated the Fuhrer's mansion once. As a treat.

_________________

He had lost track of the days.

Of where he’d asked Maes to go.

Of who he’d asked to stay with him.

He’d given up on asking Armstrong-- witnesses always said. The man had been shot by a child who’d managed to grab hold of a gun.

He lost track of the last time he’d grabbed more than a half-hour of sleep, on a bumpy train ride leaning against a window smudged with a child’s smile.

He’d tried keeping Maes on the line. He’d tried having Gracia drop by the office to bring him home.

That time, he’d held Elicia in his arms as they watched two graves being dug.

_________________

Gracia had a book full of flowers she’d pressed from their first dates. A single flower, because Maes had heard she hated the way bouquets were bound together and withered one by one. He’d promised to give her one flower each time, so she could keep it any way she wanted. Even their wedding bouquet, Maes had hidden a single white rose in an arrangement of folded paper flowers.

Gracia had gotten drunk with him one night while the Elrics watched Elicia. She’d stared at the bar counter, tracing nicks in the varnish as she told him Elicia always remembered the only promise her father ever broke.

_Not the only one_ , Mustang had wanted to say. _Just the one he made to you_.

_________________

He prayed to a god he’d never fucking believed in that he’d never see a repeat of the time he asked the Elrics to stay in Central a day longer, when half a street was torn in two, and he got a call close to midnight telling him to take the next train to Risembool, quick. Quick like _yesterday_ , Mustang, quick before the _sedatives wore off_.

When he got to that dismal hill where a childhood home used to stand, and his team stood witness to a too-empty grave for a child he’d met at eleven years old, a hundred pounds of heart in a fifty pound suit of armor.

Fullmetal didn’t cry or beg or tell them not to bury his brother because he needed to _get up_ and _go to work, wake up_.

Edward’s arm had been removed as a pre-emptive measure. He kept muttering about not even having his brother’s body to bury. His eyes were dazed and devastated by turns. 

Mustang, aching, had sat in the Rockbell’s kitchen with a bottle of moonshine heavy in his hand and his own gun heavy in his lap and listened to the throat-wrecking sobs echoing from the upstairs bedroom.

“Colonel?” Havoc’s voice was rough in a way that had nothing to do with smoking. “Message for ya.”

_________________

Hawkeye walked into his office days, weeks, eternities later. He watched the phone ring. There were no scars on the backs of his hands. His eyes were as sharp as they’d ever been. It was a beautiful, sunny day in East Headquarters. He was in hell.

“...Sir? Do you need some help?” Her voice was soft.

_When Roy was eight years old, bent over a math textbook, Aunt Chris had shouted across the bar to “quit it with the singing, Larry, you’re three beers past sober and ya’ve no voice for opera!” before dragging a hand through his hair._

_“I need help,” he’d informed her, scowling at the book._

_“Help or advice, Roy boy?”_

_“Whaddya mean?” He looked up, wincing as she pulled his ear. She insisted he talk right, even when he didn’t need to. “Ow! Fuck, auntie, what. do. you. mean?”_

_“Advice means ‘I can do this on my own but I don’t know how.’” She had grinned at him, deep plum lips delighted in her beautiful broad face. “And help means, ‘I’m up shit creek and I lost my damn paddle three latrines back.’ So. Do ya need help… or do ya need advice?”_

Mustang straightened at his desk and widened his eyes, shooting upright. “I. I’m fine, Lieutenant. Just need to make a call.”

Maes had hung up already-- he’d call again in an hour when the boys caught their train, anyway. Eighty percent of the time, nothing significant happened in that hour.

Roy sat in his office and dialled a well-known number.

“Aunt Chris? Been a while. Yeah, it’s me. Everything’s fine... I don’t need advice.”

He drummed his fingers against the table.

“Yeah, my ex, uh, Mae… she’s always going on about her favorite drink from last time, the corpse reviver? Might see if I can whip up my own tonight, but it’s never been as good as yours. Yeah. That place on Archimedes near Central headquarters, I have to make a call first though. Yeah, outside lines. Uh huh.”

Heart in his throat, he slouched back in his seat. Deliberately lounged. “Uh huh. Uh huh. Nah, she had to go away, couldn’t even tell anyone where she’d gone first. Yeah. Well, you know what they say about the married ones… the wife’s the last to know! Yeah, a real tragedy, even left behind her kid. Well, but custody’s a complex thing, maybe they’ll be together again soon. Yu-huh. Uh-huh. Well, I should be able to see you in a couple days, if all goes well. I’ll give them your love. Yeah.”

It couldn’t possibly be this easy.

“Tell the girls to take extra care, from me, will ya? Lotta folks out there, you can’t tell from their faces.” 

He prayed to the fucking devil he wouldn’t have to stand over one of his sisters’ graves.

“No, you don’t want her over for dinner, last time I swear she cooked up something that looked almost human.”

Especially Eva, who was the best of all of them at raw materials transmutation. Hell, she’d practically invented the ‘Corpse Reviver’ special when she, ah, _retired_ from the State Alchemy program.

She’d offered it to him, before the war. Knew not to even try, after.

His voice only trembled a little. “Yeah, l-love you too, auntie. See ya soon.”

_________________

For the, god-willing, last. Time.

Mustang stood in a graveyard. The grave being dug was familiar. He’d memorized every face here.

Gracia held her sobbing daughter, who didn’t understand what was going on. Mustang stood next to them, a hand on Gracia’s shoulder. In a week, he’d sit across her dining room table and quietly suggest a change of scenery.

In two, the paperwork for her husband’s life insurance would go through and she’d take her daughter to her grandparents’ in the country. They’d be involved in a car crash at some point, and Mustang would request time off for a funeral. Boxes of photographs, childrens’ clothing and toys, years of a family’s memorabilia from Central would be packed into his rented apartment. Hawkeye would make a ‘system,’ if he knew her at all.

In two months, a travel-weary woman and her child would finish a long journey by caravan. They’d meet a sharp-eyed man with week-length stubble, a healing wound in his shoulder, and the anxious jitters of a frantic husband and father.

In three, a postcard marked from Xing would be ‘mistakenly delivered’ to his home address. “Thanks for keeping your promise! Love and kisses, can’t wait to have our next family reunion! -- G+M”

Mustang would brush his fingers against the crookedly drawn smiley-face before he tucked the card into the box Hawkeye had clearly marked “Family Photos.” The box he knew would be opened first when the danger was over. 

  
  


When they could stop looking over their shoulders for immortal puppeteers of inhuman foes.

  
  


When a promise was again, not a code word or a whisper on a phone line, but a flower pressed between the pages of a book.


End file.
